Motorola Droid X Review

We are just 3 days away from the release of the new, powerful, fun Motorola Droid X smartphone on Verizon Wireless. As stated in my previous post, I received one for review back on June 23rd. This is a really awesome device. It is very similar in appearance, weight, and specs to the Evo on Sprint.

Some stand out features of the Droid X include an HDMI port, 8mb camera, 720p HD screen, 8GB internal memory + microSD card slot & Swype technology to name a few.

Physical Attributes

Yes, it is pretty big, but the size does not bother me at all. It’s very light weight, but feels solid and well made. And, as I always say… it still fits in my pocket, and that is what is important. 🙂 Because Motorola wanted to keep the phone so thin, there is an odd bump at the top where the powerful camera is housed. Some might think it’s strange, but it actually seems to aid in holding the phone stable to me.

Specs:

DISPLAY TYPE: TFT

DISPLAY SIZE: 4.3-in.; WVGA (480 x 854)

WEIGHT: 155 grams

SIZE (H X W X D): 65.5 x 127.5 x 9.9 mm

ANTENNA TYPE: Internal

FORM FACTOR: Touch Tablet

The screen is very clear, and very bright. I love having the extra real estate over my iPhone to see what I am doing and watch videos.

Droid X in my hand. Yes, it's big.

The front has 4 physical raised buttons for the menu, home, back, and search. On the left side is the micro USB port and HDMI port. On the right side is the red camera button, and volume rocker. The top has the Power/wake button, and headphone jack. The backs shows off the double LED camera, and battery/micro SD compartment.

HTC Incredible, Droid X, iPhone 3Gs

Still photos

Unlike the Evo, this Droid X does NOT have a front facing camera. But the camera that it does have works great. Picture modes include Self Portrait, Panorama assist, and Multi-shot. Scenes include Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Sport, Night Portrait, Sunset, Macro, and Steady Shot. Effects include Normal, Black & White, Negative, Sephia, Solarize, Red Tint, Green Tint, & Blue Tint.

Camera app

The camera does great in daylight. It does get a bit grainy if there is not enough light around. The flash does indeed light things up, but it does not really help the grain. Overall for a phone camera it is pretty darn good.

Specs:

MEGAPIXELS: 8 MP

DIGITAL ZOOM

FLASH: Dual LED

FOCUS: Automatic

IMAGE EDITING TOOLS: Cropping, rotating, Geo Tagging

Taken with the Droid X

Here are a few more pictures that were taken with the Droid X:

[flickr-gallery mode=”photoset” photoset=”72157624306822049″]

Video Recording

The video camera records in full 720p HD. The quality is good enough to plug the phone up to your HDMI TV and watch a movie. Video scenes include Everyday, Outdoors, Narrative, and Subject. The phone has 2 microphones which adjust based on the scene chosen. The Narrative function turns on the mic closest to the person holding the phone to allow for a clear narrative while minimizing noise from other areas. The Subject function does the opposite. It directs the mic in back of the phone to capture audio from the Subject that has the camera pointed at them.

You can also zoom in and out of a scene by using the Volume buttons.

Here is a video that was taken of Mississippi River flooding while visiting St. Louis a couple of weeks ago. This was shot only using the Everyday settings. No changes.

Email

The email functionality of the Android OS is outstanding. I love the Google integration and I love the fact that I can do just about everything that I can do on the Gmail website in the Android Mail client. This includes labels, stars, checking multiple items, archiving, reporting spam, and searching. I love my iPhone to death, but the Android mail client is far superior.

You can install multiple exchange accounts in addition to having your Gmail account integrated into the phone. So, I have my 2 Gmail accounts setup, and also my work Exchange account. The integration is very smooth. When a new message arrives the phone chimes depending on what sound you have set, and display a new mail icon in the status bar at the top of the phone.

Web browsing*

The included Browser application is a full featured web browser that correctly detects mobile versions of most websites, and adapts other sites to fit the screen for easy viewing. Using the Menu bottom you can bookmark a site, open a new window, view windows that you already have open, save a page, select text to copy, and more. I opened I think 5 windows before it yelled at me and closed the browser. Hmm…

*Supposedly Flash 10.1 will soon be available on Android which will open up a while slew of additional browsing options.

Apps

The Android Market is stepping up and definitely starting to compete with the iPhone App Store. You can find most apps that are available on iPhone, or a comparable one. There are free apps and paid apps, and it alerts you when there are updates available. Scrolling down the list you can clearly see which apps you have installed already and choose one to uninstall or upgrade. There is a separate tab for V Cast apps which does not excite me :), but you will notice that there are some repeats under the list.

Some of my favorites include:

Advanced Task Killer

eBay

Facebook

Seesmic

Twitter

Voice (more on integrating Google Voice later)

Yxplayer (play more than just mp4 movies)

DLNA

This phone having DLNA is very, very cool. Using DLNA you can connect to your desktop machine (running Windows 7), DLNA enabled TV, or other DLNA devices to copy and/or stream media direct to and from your phone.

This will be really cool once more devices support the protocol.

Media Sharing

Battery Life

BATTERY TYPE: 1540 mAh Li Ion

STANDBY TIME3: up to 220 hrs.

Usage Time: up to 480 min. (continuous)

Like most smartphones these days the battery life is not all that great. Standby time is really good, but of course if I use the phone quite a bit, checking email, talking, web browsing, etc. I will have to charge the phone halfway through the day.

The phone charges via a Micro USB adapter.

Pricing & Release

The pricing of the Droid X will be $199 after a $100 mail in rebate with a new 2-year contract. Existing Verizon customers with a contract set to end any time in 2010 can upgrade at the new customer pricing.

Voice plans range from $39.99 – $69.99

Unlimited Data is $29.99 per month

Mobile Hotspot: The phone can serve as a Mobile Hotspot for up to 5 devices. This service costs and additional $20 per month.

The Droid X will be released on July 15th on the Verizon Wireless Network.

Disclosure: I was invited as a blogger to Verizon to the launch press party of the Droid X. Upon leaving I was given a Droid X device for the purpose for review on a trial service plan. The service plan will soon be deactivated, but I get to keep the device.

Kris McDonald is Chicago mom to 2 sets of twins, wife, photography nut, gadget addict, travel addict, and tech blogger who has worked in IT for over 20 years. She figured out a while ago that she was destined to be really busy (hence the 2 sets of twins), and she has found peace with that. Read More…

Kris, You don't need to print this, but it was in Howard Forums (not Russell Forums) that I first read about the X OTA update. And, here it is—Enjoy!

Comment posted on 7/12/2010: Since the Droid X was updated from .516 to .604 firmware, I took a few new pics today to see if anything changed. I think they *might* be a tad sharper, but its tough to tell when looking at them next to the pics I took with the .514 firmware. The color is still very accurate in the pictures. The video quality hasn't improved and is still 24fps (I was hoping that a firmware update would get it to 30fps).

Kris, I couldn't find the comment I read last night (possibly on Russell Forums) re the Over The Air software update to the Droid X phone. But I did find this on today's (7/13/2010) DROIDLIFE. So, here you go:

“DROID X Receives OTA Update Just Before LaunchOn 07.13.10, In News, by Kellex

“An 18MB OTA update has been pushed to Droid X devices running in the wild. We have no reports as to what this update includes but is likely just a bug fixer. It does update the phone from version 1.13.516 to version 1.13.604.en.US which really means nothing to any of us. And no, it’s not Froyo.

“Speaking of Android 2.2, chances of it hitting the Droid today are pretty slim. There are rumors floating around now that it has been pushed back to the first week of August. Here we go again?”

Some of the best still shots I've seen to date, especially that orange canna like flower. Great clarity and color that just pops out at you. Just curious, did you do the over the air update that Motorola sent out yesterday before you took the pictures? Just wondering. Have read some speculation over the blogs that perhaps that Moto update involved changes to the X's camera software. But, rumor is rumor, huh.

Great review, I think bump on the back looks like the grips you see on many cameras. I know that the Droid X is running Motoblur on top of Android but I've heard that it's hidden from the user which appears to be true because most of the screen shots look a lot like the basic stock version of Android found on the original Droid. What differences/advantages does this version of Motoblur bring to Android?

Good review of the phone. I have been telling people if Apple doesn't get it together with the reception problems of the iPhone 4, the Droid X is the phone I would get. Plus my 2 years with AT&T will be up next month.

Also the announcement that Google has given basically anyone the ability to create their own Android app will really be cool for a lot of people. May junky up the Android app directory though.

[…] = numerous typos. UGH! Being sleepy and writing does not mix well. Yeah… so I did that Droid X Review fairly late last night. I took some time to reread it later and man oh man!! The amount of typos […]

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